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This seems rather irrelevant when we don't even have AMD/NVIDIA graphics drivers that can perform even close to Windows. Forget about the terminal colors and focus on the #1 lacking area for Linux : proper graphics acceleration.

From 8 to 256 colors, that's 32 times more colors!
It is a great leap.

Maybe you care about graphics acceleration and don't care about the terminal, but there are people who use the terminal everyday who don't care about graphics acceleration.
People have different needs, uses and goals.
People gauge success in different ways than you.

I say this every time the topic comes up: for tasks that are not inherently visual, a graphical user interface is likely to be far more arcane and difficult to use than a well-designed text interface. There is, after all a reason we have a language based on logical semantic (symbolic) structure and not pictography or imitative sounds.

But this is what sudents are tought today? No clicky = no good?http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturel...a-866adcae1111
In episode 25 or so, he moves away from their internal IDE and explains what a 'real' main(String[] args) method is. Then he goes on 'in the past' programs were started with arguments from a 'command line' etc.

I do that all the time, at home, at work... so we are from the past like caveman

We have limited resources. Meaning there is not an infinite pool of programmers with infinite time to do everything. Thus we invent the concept of focus. Right now Ubuntu number one bug is windows has majority of desktop. So we must focus on fixing that. Windows 8 will most probably be a clusterfuck. Let's take advantage of that. For now we must focus on the glaring problems of linux and right now graphics support is a major issue. So programmers should focus on that. Instead of having one idiot creating the 30000th quake 3 engine, another adding 256 colors to terminal and one writing graphics drivers maybe we should have 3 writing graphics drivers, get it? The time is limited. Windows 8 will be an opportunity for people to jump to linux. People should learn FOCUS! Once the graphics is solved they can FOCUS on another problem in order of priority. If you come to linux you see what the problems are, learn the apis and everything necessary to contribute and then contribute. Don't write the bilionth cat command in lisp or whatever you like at this moment!

You are making the mistake of assuming that all "programmers" have the same skill set. I, personally, might have the skills to modify a terminal program to support 32 colors, but I sure as hell don't have the skills to write a GPU driver. I'm sure there are a lot of Fedora contributors who are are in the same boat. If a contributor who has the skills and knowledge to work on a terminal spends his time working there, and he doesn't have the skills to work on your pet project, is anything really being lost?

Besides, as is brought up every time this argument is made, most of the contributors are volunteers and because of that your choices are: let them work on what they are interested in, or lose them as a volunteer.

We have limited resources. (...) For now we must focus on the glaring problems of linux and right now graphics support is a major issue. So programmers should focus on that.

So you are the leader of a team of programmers that intend to do that? Or are you just telling people what you think they should do? If that's the case I think you are absolutely right and so you must focus on working to improve graphics drivers! It's a glaring problem that you aren't working on graphics drivers this very instant!! You should really focus on that or else we're all doomed!! Seriously, go!! Develop!! Why are you wasting time reading this instead of developing graphics drivers??

PS: The binary driver's performance is very close on Linux and Windows.
PPS: I got tired of the politically correct answer to these types of posts :P

I am not telling anyone what he/she should do, but if the stated goal is to get rid of windows on the desktop (and from what I read this seems to be the long term goal), shouldn't we do things that move linux in that direction? I think too much time is wasted on things that do not contribute to that goal. Now we have an opportunity with windows 8 and instead of taking advantage of it we have ubuntu 12.04 which is a buggy mess for example. Is this the alternative that will make people jump ship from microsoft? Shouldn't developers like fix things in ubuntu instead of adding new UIs and other buggy stuff? (I know this is about Fedora but the points still hold. Fedora will not take over anything in the current state)

Beauty IS a reason for someone to jump ships. Or even a reason to "ignore" certain drawbacks. How do you think apple got where its at. I bet everyone would choose scarlet johannson even if she burped or farted loudly in public.

Now we have an opportunity with windows 8 and instead of taking advantage of it we have ubuntu 12.04 which is a buggy mess for example. Is this the alternative that will make people jump ship from microsoft?

No. They will just use Windows 7 for another 10+ years. And if they do decide to dip their toes into another pool, it'll be with something that actually works, like a Mac.

Shouldn't developers like fix things in ubuntu instead of adding new UIs and other buggy stuff?

No. They just dismiss any bug reports that come in marked as "tainted crap" and wish you on your way.

After all, when it's free, what's really the motivation to make it good? It's not like they lose their livelihood if they don't make the customer happy.

Terminals are so 80's. Sure, they do and always will have their uses, but user interfaces are simply the superior way of doing things. Linux isn't intended to be confined to geeks, it actually has a future.

That doesn't mean that it should be confined to wondoze newbs. One of the biggest WEAKNESSES of wondoze, is that it lacks a strong terminal. That's why ALL of the 'geeks' as you so insultingly call them, have gone to Linux -- because it has a strong terminal in which they can be effective.

Overall, I'm not very enthused about F18. F17 had a ton of features that were immediately beneficial to a user, but most of the stuff in 18 seems to be plumbing stuff, or something like this for the terminal.

OTOH, I'm sure that many of these F18 features will make F19 fantastic.

So lets have some complete consideration here;
In order to satisfy the 'geeks', you need to have the terminal and plumbing -- for them to be efficient. When the geeks are satisfied, they are able to spread sprinkles to make YOU happy.

Quite frankly, a computer is a device that is supposed to DO STUFF to make your life easier. It is NOT a device that is just there to LOOK PRETTY. FUNCTION > FORM. First and foremost, it must WORK, after that, you can waste time making it 'pretty'.

Remember that YOU (and those just like you) are not the only one(s) using this. The objective is for it to appeal to EVERYONE.

But nobody has the hobby of fixing bugs and doing all that tiresome dirty work that's necessary to make things run smoothly.

IME hobby stuff tends to fulfill the needs and desires of the hobbyist, not some end consumer.

Businesses operate on a whole different plane.

Your assumptions don't match reality. If you are passionate about something, you tend to do the tedious work along with the interesting work and for some people, certainly finding out the source of a problem and fixing it can be personally very rewarding. I know I have spend a lot of my own time on such things.